I'm surprised how many people on here want to scapegoat Franklin. So he is overwhelmed with a family that isn't the perfect one he envisioned and the only way he knows how to counter that is by playing the extra perfect father. That doesn't make him the source of the problem.
I agree with Rina that Eva is not a trustworthy narrator and one must look past her justification to find the real story. There is no excuse for some of her behavior and had she been a better mother, results may have been different. That being said, Kevin is just evil. I don't know how I could have raised a child like that, but I think I could have at least given him an ounce of love.
My mother and brother never bonded and there was always tension between them growing up. My brother has always been an angry person but does that come from this lack of maternal nurturing or was he just born difficult? I think he is the way he is and his relationship with my mother expounded an already bad situation. That's how I think it is with Kevin and Eva.

Barbarossa,

You asked this question nearly a year ago, but the emphatic answer to your question is NO!!!

Very few of them have happened in affluent areas. Most of them have been in rural areas, where hunting rifles and other weapons are common. Columbine is unusual in that it's a suburb of Denver, so it got a lot more media attention than previous shootings in Arkansas, Oregon and western Kentucky and others.

Some have happened in urban areas. A 6 year old brought a gun to school and shot a classmate. Because his/ her mother was in jail and s/he missed her. But mostly weapon detectors have become a fact of life in urban high schools, so no, there haven't been (as) many shootings there.

i havent finished the book yet, but i wanted to ask: does anyone wonder if maybe, eva, the narrator, is not entirely trustworthy in the way she tells the story? Whether Kevin and Franklin werent quite as obviously awful as she tells it because its filtered through her bias seen AFTER the Thursday?

On a slight aside folks, have all the actual school shootings happened in affluent areas?
I live across the pond so I'm not too up to speed.
Any ever happen in inner city areas?

i lost my sympathy for eva when she let kevin hurt celia, she seems to just say "it wasnt me" shrugs her shoulders and let everything carry on as before. if she loved celia so much why does she do nothing to save her? and why does she still love franklin so much, when he shows so little respect for her and her opinions?

And if only Herr and Frau Hitler had sat down and really communicated with little Dolphie . . . I don't know, Minnie. I certainly agree that it could be very hard for parents to conceive of the horrors their own offspring could be capable of, but I also believe that it could be hard for parents to conceive of the fact that, when it comes to some children at least, they could in fact be perfectly powerless.

I have no idea whether the Dahmers conducted family meetings at which they discussed their parental dissatisfaction with all the headless housecat corpses lying around in the woods out back--all I'm saying is, if they did, maybe it would have helped--and maybe it wouldn't have. In a case like Kevin's, I think it's clear that there was no helping.

Ha ha! Your secret's safe with us, Min! I do recommend The Nurture Assumption if you want to feel a little better about picking favorites. Judith Rich Harris will tell you it's utterly natural.

Chuckell,
Perhaps if Mr and Mrs Dahmer had talked about their son, things may have been different, but they didn't. Instead they circled about him confused by his "Otherness" because the grim truth of parenting is that you cannot ever conceive the horror of what your children are capable of without looking into yourself also. And that is a journey for only the truly brave.

If one looks over the range of this discussion it is amazing to see the different paths it has taken, from united parents or not to loving children equally or not. Lionel Shriver should be commended for creating a book that has provoked such an interesting and lively debate.

PS don't tell my children, but one of them is the child of my heart :)

Sure, in literature. I guess that's what we're talking about here, anyway, right? A book about a difficult child written by a childless woman, no less... and then embraced intellectually by you, a childless man. Nobody is exactly providing relevant insight from "real life experience" here.

Oh, no doubt, it would be a tough decision to have make, or at the very least, it would be a tough decision to have to own up to. Or that's what I understand from reading Sophie's Choice. But I don't believe it's unrealistic that the average mom might have a favorite--a mother may have carried each child to term, but she's also had to deal with each one since day one. One mom might find she cherishes the easygoing kid more, while another might find the challenges of dealing with a difficult kid deepens the connection. Judith Rich Harris and I are in accord on this discussion!

Yes, I can see the respect thing, now that you mention it.

You could never "get" a mother to "admit it"? We're not talking about a favorite tv show or a pet hamster here. It's probably slightly more difficult to pick and choose between the human lives that one carries around in her womb for 9 months and then spends hours in agony bringing into the world, only to come away with a body that's aged a decade in the process. I think that might make it somewhat trying down the line -- when one of them becomes a total psychopath and the other a vacant sweetheart -- to answer which one she "likes better." I would imagine a mother's feelings are way too complex to be able to circle y/n at that -- or any -- point.

All mothers love each of their children equally? I strongly doubt that--but I do believe I could never get a mother to admit it if I'm right. But I didn't feel for a second that Kevin spared his mom because she loved him but because he respected her for seeing through him, and respected her for not loving his utterly unlovable ass. No kind of love in either direction was factored into his murderous calculations. If anything, he left her alive to punish her for not loving him--though I think it was more so that she could be an audience than an injured party.

She isn't actually loved more, though -- Kevin just thinks she is. Sure, she's adored more, put on a pedestal more, fussed over more, etc., but the whole point is that in the end, parents do love their children equally -- or at least, mothers do. And Kevin spares his mother because she's the only one who remotely knows him AND she still loves him.

Fine, Beth. So he's chock full of evil, filled to overflowing, not merely a soulless little creep. Even so, I can't imagine what social milieu you envision such a child might have been born into where he would have been a model citizen. Spiritual emptiness? Do you honestly believe spiritualism is a component of many kids' lives anywhere in the world?

A sister who is loved more because she isn't crazy? Honesty is one of the great things about Lionel Shriver's writing, and right there's an excellent example of the truth--no modern parent would ever have the guts to actually say "Frankly, I don't really love my cute, sweet, innocent little girl and my sociopathic monster of a son equally!" but god knows he or she would damn well think it.

I don't know, "Chuckell" -- I think that if there's one thing Kevin isn't, it's "empty." "Filled" to the brim with bad things, maybe, but definitely not empty.

I think it's more that here's this child born with whatever degree of serious mental instability/psychosis -- into a world of complete upper-crust white suburban materialism and spiritual emptiness. With a dumb, happy-go-lucky dad, a little sister who is loved more because she isn't crazy, and a mom who -- though he knows she's onto him -- is too much of a wuss all along to really call him out on anything. But since she's the LEAST empty, he spares her.

It's every boy's birthright to have a father who pisses him off. As for dragging Kevin to participate in "empty activities," well, I think it's clear that Kevin is the empty one. Or maybe Franklin should have gotten more in tune with his son, and taken him on field trips to the local slaughterhouse?

And Minnie--as for presenting a united front against Kevin, I'd have to ask, to what end? Oh, sure, I can see in the real world that a couple coming together in conflict with a marginally troubled child could really help. And maybe they could have ganged up on Kevin enough to at least take his crossbow away. But that's not the reality of this book. It's more like Mrs. Dahmer saying, "Honey, we need to talk about Jeff, Jr. . . ."

The "bad seed" in this book was the husband, not Kevin. Imagine growing up with a fake, constantly-cheerful tool of a father who drags you into participating in activity after empty activity all your life? I'd want to open fire on somebody, too. How can anyone have a meaningful discussion about anything when half of the involved parental unit is completely oblivious not just to his son but to his wife and everything about his entire family?

let's face it you're right about the nature of Kevin. And talking was in fact useless but the one parent was in denial whilst the other knew he was as you so aptly put it, malignant. If they had done the dreary (and once again you're right, it sounds dreary and it is!) business of talking to each other, they could have at least united against him. Kevin played his parents off against each other because they did not talk to each other. The fights and slanging matches don't count. I found the title apt because generally by the time a parent reaches the "We need to talk about..." stage the mess they're in is generally beyond talk and usually it's one parent's concern that's being expressed against denial by the other parent.

Hmm, interesting. I don't agree, of course--since talking about Kevin wasn't going to do one bit of good for anyone. We Need to Get Kevin Some Convulsive Electroshock Therapy might have been a bit more realistic. Or We Need to Talk to the State High-Security Mental Institution About Kevin, perhaps. And I'd have to say that I didn't see the book as being about a parent grappling with a troubled child as much as it is about a person dealing with a truly malign presence in her life. Really, they could have talked about Kevin until the cows came home, but then what? What could they have accomplished? Had him institutionalized? Sent to military school to put his asocial rage to good use? Well, perhaps--at the risk of putting him in a position to learn how to use a gun. I don't even feel like the title sounds all that desperate--desperation I can identify with. We need to talk . . . just sounds dreary!

Hi Chuckell
This title is perfect and your response proves it so! What man/father /husband ever responds to this desperate plea, "we need to talk about our child"? I know this illustrates a gender bias but I bought the book because of its title, the desperation rang true to my motherly ears!
This novel is also about the inability to communicate on the most pressing issue, that of a child with a problem. One parent generally has insight and the other is unwilling or unable to see the problem. Kevin very successfully succeeded in dividing his parents and in so doing he ruled.

I work with a guy named Kevin. He couldn't be nicer. Don't let this book prejudice you against Kevins--they're not all congenital amoral monsters.

Does anyone else agree that this book has, quite simply, the worst title ever? The title is so squishy-feely that I feel somewhat certain that I am literally the only man that has ever read it.

Marina, I agree that a big part of the problem was Franklin. Could a parent be more blind? I also enjoy Shriver's writing and am currently reading The Post-Birthday World. Not too far into it but love the concept of presenting two alterative outcomes to the character's decision in chapter one.

I read this book over a year ago and find that Lionel Shriver's stories are so refreshingly honest and really speak to the honest side of human emotions. I think that the problem in this situation was Franklin. It was Franklin who wanted children, when Eva did not. It was Franklin who never supported his wife and disempowered her in front of Kevin. But I also think that Kevin was intrinsically difficult and manipulative. I was particularly stuck on the map wallpaper incident. This was the point in the book when I was convinced that Eva was being victimized by Kevin.

I went to a reading by Lionel Shriver very recently where she mostly discussed her most recent book. However she did make several comments about Kevin. One of the things she said (this is not a quote) was that Kevin didn't like people who "had his number" I think that included Evan who had Kevin's number from the very beginning.

This is a devastating story but what impressed me most about it was its startlingly tender resolution- the question of the nature vs. nurture source of Kevin's evil is put aside as unanswerable, as is best summed up by Kevin himself in a very simple, "who knows, she could be a creep, but then I could be a creep too." Within this family the strongest understanding of character- a stark, unsentimental understanding- was between Eva and Kevin. And in the end what's most remarkable is the very believability of Eva and her son coming to love one another.

I started this book the day of the NIU campus shootings. Bad timing. Needless to say, I've thought of nothing else.
I love that there are no questions answered at the end. I keep going back and forth about whether Eva's behavior caused Kevin's or vice versa (though I tend to land on the "bad seed" side). Oddly the strongest emotion I feel is toward Franklin, who I wish had just once understood that Eva was telling the truth, that no matter where it came from there was something awful going on.
It made me so so sad.

I found this book had much in common with Jonathan Kellerman's Savage Spawn in which he looks unflinchingly at the nature of evil in children. Above all he comes to the conclusion that it's no use trying to understand these children because evil is different and that's how i felt about Kevin. he was born evil and the only person he had any "respect" for was his mother because she recognised him. The bond with him was impossible because of who he was. And Eva was a good mother to her daughter, so i don't think she is to blame for his actions. The only irony is that even she could not conceive of his final act of unbearable cruelty. when i read that, i flung away the book in sheer horror. yet i believed that he was capable of doing what he did.

I read this book over a year ago and I still think about it...it was that good. It definitely serves as a disturbing dialogue on the nature/nuture argument - and like everything other example seems to indicate that the answer is that both nature and nurture make humans the way they are. It think what makes the novel so effective is that it's easy to empathize with Eva - her anger, fear, pain, and impatience. It makes one question "What if I didn't bond with my child? What if I disliked it and was scared of it?". Scary.

While reading this book, I tried to lay blame for situations but I just couldn't do it.

Could it be Eva who never really wanted to be a mom? Give up her freedom and career. Listening to her when she was pregnant with Kevin was difficult.

Kevin. Did he know his mom never really wanted him....deep down? Was he just a bad seed? Some people are evil. period.

Frankin. He never supported Eva in any actions taken agaisnt Kevin to help correct some behavior issues. Was he too much of a friend and not a dad?

I can't seem to pin point it.

I find it interesting to look at the view of the family of the shooter. Even in news coverage for "real" school shootings you don't really get to see the other side of the event which is the family of the person that committed the crime.

I thought this book was an interesting stimulus for these deep questions. Was Kevin crazy, or was he wicked? How much of his personality, if any, could be attributed to the imperfect attachment between him and his mother? Or is it the other way around? I'd love to hear what people think.